CD-R Bootable?

[Nate Duehr <nate@natetech.com>]

Hi all,

Long-time linux user, new to Mac.  Bought a nifty little iMac DV SE (the
500Mhz G3 version) last weekend and have been messing around with it.
Nice machine!

Read through all the Debian docs and Ethan's stuff on his site.  Nice
job, guys.

Created a Debian-PPC ISO image and burnt a CD-R to "ease" installation.

Repartitioned the drive with Apple's tool to have a small partition up
front for the boot gymnastics, an HFS+ partition for OS9, and a bunch
(20 MB) of unallocated space to put other toys in (OS X, Linux).

The plan was to then boot from the CD-R and finish up with mac-fdisk.

>From reading, I thought that the Debian-PPC CD-R should have been
bootable.  I know about holding down C during the boot, etc.  It won't
boot.  It *is* perfectly readable however.

So looking for some expertise from more experienced PPC folks.  Is my CD
image bad?  I guess that's a silly question.  Is there any way to check
the MD5 sum from within OS9?

Next question would be is there a way I can get Linux installed with
what's on this (otherwise perfectly good it seems) CD.

Thanks in advance, looking forward to typing up my notes from the
installation for others to follow to help out the cause...

Nate

p.s. I'm quite a bit behind in my debian-powerpc list reading, so if
you'd be so kind as to cc me with replies, it would be helpful...
otherwise I'll eventually get to it in a while today.  I'm trying to
read through the last few weeks of debian-powerpc messages.